Guide
IT office move: servers, comms rooms and who is liable
Updated
The furniture will be fine. It is the comms room, the connectivity lead time and the machine that never came back up that decide whether the move was a success.
Scope it as three separate jobs
- Decommission
- Labelling, photographing patching, powering down in order, and packing to a spec. Usually done by your own IT team or your managed service provider, not by the removal crew.
- Transport
- Specialist handling for racks, air-ride vehicles for sensitive kit, and a single named person responsible for chain of custody.
- Recommission
- Rack, patch, power up in order, test. This is the part that determines whether staff can work on Monday, and it needs its own time window and its own owner.
Connectivity is the long lead item
Circuits into a new building are ordered, not switched. That lead time is measured in weeks, sometimes months for a new fibre install, and it does not compress because your lease dates moved. Order connectivity before you book the removal, and keep the old circuit live over the changeover if you can: paying for two months of overlap is cheaper than a week of a business that cannot work.
Old kit is not just clutter
Equipment you are not taking is waste electrical and electronic equipment. The Environment Agency's classification guidance notes that WEEE often has components containing hazardous substances or persistent organic pollutants, including printed circuit boards, plastic casings and cables, cathode ray tubes, capacitors and Ni-Cd batteries, and that where levels are over a certain amount the item is classified as hazardous or POPs waste (gov.uk: WEEE, how to classify). That changes who can take it away and what paperwork comes back.
The data on it is still yours
The Information Commissioner's Office notes that many security incidents are caused by things like the abandonment of old computers, and lists how you dispose of paper and electronic waste among the technical and organisational measures you are expected to have (ICO: a guide to data security). A move is the moment old drives leave the building in bulk, so decide before move day who is wiping or destroying them and what evidence you get back.
- Ask for an itemised asset list of everything taken for disposal, by serial number.
- Ask what happens to the data: wipe to a stated standard, or physical destruction.
- Ask for the certificate, and check the disposal firm's waste carrier registration.
- Keep the waste transfer note. Both parties must keep a copy for 2 years.
Agree a rollback plan. If the comms room is not up by an agreed time on Sunday, what happens Monday? Knowing the answer before you start is worth more than any part of the quote.